Every year on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation/Orange Shirt Day (September 30th) we wear orange to raise awareness about Indian Residential School (IRS) and the genocide against Indigenous families and Nations. Please upload to this Google Drive folder (Orange Shirt Day Selfies- 2021) or email diocesan Right Relations Coordinator Leigh Kern (lkern@toronto.anglican.ca) "selfies" from your community members wearing orange and/or holding a sign of solidarity, if you would like your selfie to be featured on the Toronto Urban Native Ministry Facebook page and possibly in The Anglican.
Your signs of solidarity may include statements such as: "Every Child is Sacred," "we name and confess the genocide against Indigenous children and families," or "Every Child Matters." Share your selfies on your social media outlets and use the following hashtags to raise awareness: #noprideingenocide #everychildmatters
Worship
You may want to incorporate the themes of Orange Shirt Day into your liturgical life as a community.
Prayer Resources:
The first part of this litany can be used alone as a litany of confession. You may wish to edit or add to this litany; feel free to email lkern@toronto.anglican.ca if you would like feedback or support.
Prayer for those Who Did not Return Home from Residential School and for all Missing and Murdered Indigenous People
By Toronto Urban Native Ministry
Let us pray,
We hold close to our hearts today those whose absence leaves a gap too great for words. We hold to our hearts and grieve those beautiful lives cut short by colonial violence.
For the thousands of children who did not return home from residential school,
For the many Indigenous people who are missing, or taken from us,
May love surround them.
May love circle those who miss them from their circles of love, family, and community. May love empower and encourage us to act with compassion, understanding, and peace.
Peace and dignity to all beings, of earth, sky, and sea.
We lament the violence at every level of Canadian society.
May we all listen and follow the leadership of the families in this time of reckoning and calls for justice.
May the chains of violence in hearts and communities be healed at their deepest roots.
We hold close to our hearts the tears of so many, and the dead who lay in the earth.
We commit ourselves to praying, listening, being in relationship, speaking, and acting for the healing of the generations past and generations to come. Creator of life- unleash the healing of your love in this land. In the spirit of the Creator who is with us now, Amen.